Swiss American Historical Society Review

Volume 40 Number 2 Article 4

6-2004

Adelrich Steinach's Autobiographical Sketch

Adelrich Steinach

Leo Schelbert

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Recommended Citation Steinach, Adelrich and Schelbert, Leo (2004) "Adelrich Steinach's Autobiographical Sketch," Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 40 : No. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol40/iss2/4

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ADELRICH STEINACH' S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

If the editor dares to enter here [in Geschichte und Leben der Schweizer Kolonien] the list of American-Swiss natural scientists, he does not do it because he assumes to have achieved a name among them, but because he has pursued studies in that field for more than twenty years. The name Severin Ade/rich was given me at baptism on April 26, 1826, on which day I was born in Uznach, Canton St. Gallen in the family of Anton Steinach. At that time I did not know that to pronounce the name would create such difficulty for Americans, otherwise I most likely would have protested. After I had finished the schools of the small town, I went to the Gymnasium Schools of Kreuzlingen, then of St. Gallen, and then to the Lyceum in Freiburg in where I simultaneously became the home teacher of the princes Ghika von Jassy, from Wallachia, 1 who at that time were taking instruction from Pere Girard, the famous teacher of French.2 After the Swiss Civil War I attended the University of Frei burg im Breisgau and studied there theological, philosophical, and natural science disciplines. There my fellow student was the previously mentioned, later Pastor Meury, now deceased.3 Because the revolutionary years 1848 and

1 Walachia is a region of southern Romania that in the late 14th century had come under Turkish suzerainty. In 1565 Yassy became the capital of Moldavia and since the mid­ seventeenth century emerged as a Romanian cultural center. The Ghika are a family of Albanian origin which became powerful in the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Walachia, beginning with Gheorghe Ghika (c.1600-1664). The princes in question were possibly the sons of Ion Ghika (1817-1897), from 1842 to 1844 professor of economics in Jassy; he participated in the 1848 uprising and went after its failure into exile for some years; later he returned to Romania and was active in Romanian politics. 2 Pere Gregoire Girard (1765-1850) was a Franciscan and educator in the mode of Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), the major Swiss theoretician of new approaches to formal primary education. In 1844 Girard published a 6 volume work titled De l 'enseignement regulier de la langue maternelle dans /es ecoles et lafamille . 3 Johann Meury hailed from Blauen, Canton Bern, studied in Freiburg, Germany with A. Steinach, got involved in the 1848 revolutionary agitation, was imprisoned, then freed by friends . In 1851 he was ordained as a Catholic priest, in 1857 he became a Protestant and emigrated to the United States, returned to Switzerland , married, and re-emigrated. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, and in 1870 was pastor in Brooklyn. He died May 19, 1887. His son also became a minister and was pastor in Jersey City Heights. See A. Steinach , Swiss Colonists, 60-61.

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1849 were not favorable to the muses, I gladly accepted the position of district-office secretary for the Lake District offered me by the Executive Council [Regierungsrat] of St. Gallen. Yet I held the position only for two years and attended after the death of my father the University of Munich to study medicine and fields of natural science under [Professors] Martius, Kobell, and Btichner.4 I continued the same studies at the French Universities of Strassburg and Paris. Soon after graduation in Strassburg and State Boards in St. Gallen I left the old homeland and landed on January 6, 1855 in New York. In order to explore a suitable place for the establishment of a medical practice, I spent several weeks with my friend and former schoolmate Dr. Ch. Cavelti in Staten Island. Paterson in the State of New Jersey was then a swiftly rising small city with about 800 Germans, and since no German physician had located there, I decided to establish there my medical practice, and it proved to be a felicitous undertaking until in 1857 the financial crisis not only closed half of the factories, but also depopulated half of the city. I returned to New York. At the outbreak of the Civil War I went at the end of 1861 as Assistant Physician into the field with the 103rd New York Volunteer Regiment and returned with it in the year 1865 as Regimental Physician. In the same regiment also the Swiss Max Tissot of Neuchatel served as Assistant Physician. Excerpts of the reports which I had sent to the Physician General from the field were later published in the Medical History of the Rebellion. 5

4 Carl Martius (1794-1868) was professor of botany in Munich since 1826, after he had undertaken a three year research trip to Brazil. Franz KobeU (1803-1882) was professor of mineralogy since 1834. Biichner was perhaps August Wilhelm Biichner (1790-1849), a chemist, although he was mainly active in Mainz. 5 See The Medical and Surgical History of the War of Rebellion (1861-65). Prepared in Accordance with Acts of Congress, under the Direction of Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes, United States Army (Washington [D.C.]: Government Printing Office, Second Issue, 1875), 108, 134, for two brief extracts, attributed to a "Report on the Medical History of the 103d New York Volunteers. By A. Steinach, Assistant Surgeon 103d N. Y. Volunteers." The first exerpt reads: "The regiment was again drawn up in line of battle on the northern side of Antietam creek. We went into action one hundred and eighty-seven strong, and lost eighteen killed, seventy-five wounded, and twenty-seven prisoners and missing .. .. During the battles at South Mountain and Antietam, some amputations of the thigh and leg were performed on the field; the result was unfavorable. I cannot remember a single case in which such an operation was successful. In other cases, the operations were performed in buildings prepared for temporary field hospitals . In general, the amputations of an arm or leg were successful, while the thigh cases, with a very few exception, were fatal." https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol40/iss2/4 2 Steinach and Schelbert: Adelrich Steinach's Autobiographical Sketch 2004] Steinach 's Autobiographical Sketch 13

Since that time my medical practice has not been interrupted by an unusual event. In 1859 already I became familiar in the reading room of the Cooper Institute 6 with a series of articles in the Revue de deux mondes by Quatrefages, 7 titled "L' espece humaine," which explained to me the various current, yet wholly different views concerning the evolution of mankind. From curiosity and the thirst for knowledge I researched the validity of the doctrines and became absorbed in all branches of science that could give me relevant information. From Charles Darwin's work Of the Origin of Species which appeared in 1856 to the letters of Karl Vogt 8 in Vienna's Neue Freie Presse in 1877 I perused most relevant published writings and works, more than 1400 in number, made excerpts, then published my views in a larger work of two volumes, each of about 700 pages, which in 1886 appeared at Ben[n]o Schwabe in Basel under the title: System of the Organic Evolution. Among scholars there exist three different opinions concerning the origin of the present world order. Some accept its creation according to the story of the Bible. Others who follow the view of Cuvier\ the creator of comparative anatomy, claim that "on earth there occurred after long time spans several sudden revolutions. Each time the surface of the earth was transformed by elevations or depressions and all its inhabitants, animals as well as plants, perished and after it new beings emerged. Guyot 10 attempts in his work Creation to harmonize the latter doctrine with the Bible. In turn the newer geologists, following the assertions of Lyell, Huxley, Hackel, and

6 In 1859 Peter Cooper , a philanthropist, established the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art with a library and a free night school for the working class . 7 Jean Louis Armand Quatrefages de Breau (1810-1892) was a natural scientist and a life­ long opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution; see Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 11 (New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975), 233-235. 8 Karl Christoph Vogt (1817-1895) published Vorlesungen iiber den Menschen: Seine Ste/lung in der Schopfung und in der Geschichte der Erde. Giessen: J. Rickersche Buchhandlung, 1863; the work appeared in English translation in 1864 in London . He was a Darwinist and advocate of scientific materialism; see ibid., 14 (1976), 57-58 . 9 Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) tried to reconcile the biblical account of creation with the findings of paleontology and zoology and took a static view of the interdependence of creatures; see ibid ., 3 (1971), 521-528. 10 Arnold Henry Guyot (1807-1884) from Boudevilliers, Switzerland, became professor of and at in 1854. In 1849 had appeared in Boston a translation from the French of his Earth and Man, or Lectures on Comparative Physical Geography in Its Relation to the History of Mankind. Although he maintained the validity of the Biblical tradition, later in life Guyot accepted some evolution by natural causes; see ibid., 5 (1972), 599-600.

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Darwin 11, claim that the transformations of the earth had occurred slowly, gradually and that the now existing complex beings had evolved from earlier simpler ones. The present creation was thus the result of a slow evolution, the origin of the present creatures having evolved from previous ones. The latter claim, the evolution of the present beings from earlier ones, is rejected by L. Agassiz, 12 and he remained to his death the most stubborn and able opponent of the doctrine of evolution or as it is called the Deszendenz-Theory. In the System of Organic Evolution 13 I examined this doctrine and with modifications found it to be valid, yet I also demonstrated that this doctrine has nothing to do with materialism because it only attempts to explain the evolution of beings, yet does not address their material and mental origin, thus to oppose it on that basis rests on a prejudice.

Source: Adelrich Steinach, Geschichte und Leben der Schweizer Kolonien (1889), 355-357. Translated and annotated by Leo Schelbert.

11 Charles Lyell (1797-1875) established the science of geology and in 1864 publicly announced his support of Darwin's view of natural selection; see ibid., 8 (1973), 563-576 . Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was a proponent of methodological agnostiscism, and Ernst Heinrich Hackel staunchly supported Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and a worldview based solely on science; see ibid., 6 (1972), 589-597 and 6-11; on Darwin ibid., 3 (1971), 565-577. 12 Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-1873), an eminent Swiss natural scientist, later professor at Harvard University, remained a staunch opponent of Darwin 's evolutionist views and maintained divine intervention in natural events; see ibid ., l (1970), 72-74. 13 Steinach advertised the book as System der Organischen Entwicklung, naturwissenschaftlich­ kritisch dargestellt von Dr. Adelrich Steinach in New York. Zwei Biinde von 640 und 683 Seiten. I. Band: Die Entwicklung der Pflanzen und Thiere. IT. Band: Die Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechtes ; gedruckt in Basel, Schweiz , Benno Schwabe's Verlagshandlung, 1888. $5.00. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol40/iss2/4 4